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An artificial muscle made of a stretched shape memory polymer contracts upon heating, bending a mannequin’s arm. Credit: Adapted from ACS Central Science 2021, DOI: 10.1021/acscentsci.1c00829
When stretched or deformed, shape memory polymers return to their original shapes after heat or light is applied. Thes...
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With wall thicknesses of about 160 nanometers, a closed-cell, plate-based nanolattice structure designed by researchers at UCI and other institutions is the first experimental verification that such arrangements reach the theorized limits of strength and stiffness in porous materials. Credit: Cameron Crook an...
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Developed in the lab of Yale’s Rebecca Kramer-Bottiglio, NASA-inspired robotic skins enable users to turn soft objects – a stuffed animal or a foam tube, for instance – into robots.
When you think of robotics, you likely think of something rigid, heavy, and built for a specific purpose. New “Robotic Skins” tec...
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08-28
Zoom-in of the carbon-fiber reinforced coiled muscle with a diameter of 0.4mm.
The pull-up, an exercise dreaded by most, answers a basic question: are your muscles strong enough to lift your own body weight?
Some Illinois researchers w...
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08-27
Mosquitoes are able to fly adeptly during a rainstorm as well as under clear skies, but how do they manage that feat? Since mosquitoes weigh 50 times less than raindrops, shouldn’t they be crushed by the rain? David Hu has discovered ot...
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08-26
A product of collaboration between Stanford’s Dynamic Design Lab and the Volkswagen Electronics Research Lab, Shelly the self-driving Audi TTS hit track speeds of 120 mph.
Other than some decals and a few extra antennas, there’s nothing ...
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08-25
A scanning electron microscope image of the graphene covering pores in the polycarbonate track etch membrane.
Finding that large membranes engineered from single sheets of grapheme allow small molecules to pass through, researchers are...
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08-24
The research team has now succeeded in producing miniaturized supermagnets using laser-based 3D printing. Credit: IMAT – TU Graz
Research team develops a method for producing specially designed magnets.
Magnetic materials are an import...
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08-23
Johns Hopkins University’s Terradynamics Lab created this snake robot to mimic its animal counterpart. Credit: JHU/Will Kirk
Snakes live in diverse environments ranging from unbearably hot deserts to lush tropical forests, where they s...
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08-23
Researchers demonstrate how they can overcome a persistent challenge known as dendrites to create a metal battery that performs nearly as well as a lithium-ion battery, but relies on potassium — a much more abundant and less expensive ...